


Slow

by beatricelacy



Category: Happy Valley (TV)
Genre: Gen, ok this is ??? idk what I think of this but have it anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-24
Updated: 2015-09-24
Packaged: 2018-04-23 05:30:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4864871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beatricelacy/pseuds/beatricelacy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Catherine Cawood is everything Helen would be, if only she could find the strength.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Slow

 She doesn’t feel like they understand how angry she is. She is, in their eyes, poor ill Helen; asking her if she wants to lie down and patting her on the back, commending her for being so strong. She doesn’t feel strong though, not like they tell her she is, and she doesn’t want to go lie down. Her heart races regardless of what she does, but if she could do _something,_ whatever that something may be, then she’d embrace the pain with open arms.

She’d rather fall down than lie down. She wishes she’d been with Catherine that day, down by the canal, under the trees, kicking the shit out of Tommy Lee fucking Royce with her. Her fall would be inevitable then, her slow collapse, but at least it would be worth it. She is not the only woman who has had her life ruined by Tommy Lee Royce, and though she still has her daughter, she herself is not going to be around for much longer and she wants to cling to the earth, screaming, fighting until she can fight no more, because she wants to - she has to - protect her daughter, wrap up her Annie, take down anyone who gets in her way.

But she can’t; that was never how she was. She’s always been quiet Helen, kind, unassuming Helen; Nevison Gallagher’s Wife, the rich lady from up the hill - she’s never been allowed to protest, and now she never will. Her own body is tearing apart from the inside out, and she can see the look in Nevison’s eyes – three months, the doctor was said. Three months, if that. This is how her life is to end, and it scares her. She feels the world rushing by, like the trains from Manchester, swooping through Hebden Bridge and Todmorden before she can barely blink, carrying travellers from here and there, and never again will she be one of them.

She too, lies in bed at night, cold, and dreams of vengeance, but she’s not Catherine Cawood, and Catherine Cawood has had her moment, which she can never have. She supposes she should be grateful that He is in prison, the He she won’t mention, but the thought of him sitting cosily in prison doesn’t satisfy her, and she always wants more. She had never understood it when Clare had told her how much she worried about Catherine, but she gets it now, she understands – yet it isn’t Clare and her worry she feels for, it’s Catherine.

God, Clare. Her friend, her _only_ friend if truth be told, the aged rock chick with streaks in her hair, and she smiles softly at the thought, but Clare’s always been a funny one too, with her sad lingering glances and her weather chapped hands. She loves Clare, and she’s sure Clare loves her too, though it’s all unspoken and Clare, for the most part, seems oblivious to the fact Helen really does love her – she smokes behind the church they work for, and she never let Helen see her unhappy. Helen can’t work at the mission any more, the doctor tactfully told her to leave – too much stress he said, it’d put too much pressure on her body he said – and she looked at him miserably, remembering dully how his name was Simon Blake and he’d once kissed her in the English classroom when they were still at school. And here he was, signing her death sentence, and she couldn’t help but smile, morbidly perhaps, at the irony of this coupled with her first kiss – _he gave me the kiss of death_ , she thought, _he cursed me, all those years ago_.

She wants to fight him too, wants to fight Simon Blake and his bedside, detached grey eyes, wondering if he even remembers who she once was. She feels like she’s faded as she’s aged, and now she’s ill she’s about to be snuffed out; she’s always been conventional, embracing her role as middle class housewife with relative ease, but dying relatively young wasn’t something she’d ever anticipated. True, she was nearly sixty, but that was still young, surely? She looks at herself in the mirror and sighs, prodding the loose flesh around her stomach. She’d been curvy when she was younger, and plump in middle age, but she’s lost weight lately and she doesn’t like it, she feels like she’s shrinking in on herself, shedding her skin, but without the rebirth at the end of it.

She doesn’t know what to do with her time now she can’t work at the mission. She tried going for a walk on her first day but it exhausted her so much she could barely make it home, and she spent the second day on the sofa, listlessly flicking through channels on the television and consistently on the verge of tears, hating her incapability – she went out on the third day, after that. She didn’t care anymore, even if it was going to kill her. It was, she felt, her only way of fighting, her only way at lashing out at the world, and she slipped a hand written card through Catherine Cawood’s letterbox on hearing through the grapevine she was going to be applauded by the queen.

Next thing she knew, she had Catherine herself on her doorstep, grim faced and clutching a bouquet of flowers. “Thank you,” she said simply, bluntly, thrusting the blooms in Helen’s face, and she flushes, stomach lurching. She shouldn’t be getting these flowers, not from Catherine Cawood of all people, but she takes them all the same and invites her in, shakily making tea; a weak sort of thank you perhaps, but a try all the same.

They drink in silence, Helen silently watching Catherine out of the corner of her eye. “Catherine, I…” she begins, and she drops her gaze to the floor. “I wish I could do what you do. I wish I could fight.”

Catherine looks at Helen searchingly, her expression unreadable, and Helen shifts uncomfortably, suddenly scared she’s said the wrong thing, but Catherine smiles minutely and drops her gaze to her lap.

“Oh Helen,” she sighs quietly, “Helen.”

“I wish I’d been there with you,” Helen says. “I wish I could’ve been there to help you, kicking him, b-beating him up.”

Catherine scratches her forehead, and looks right across at her. “You were,” she says simply. “I’m sure you were.”

She leaves after that and Helen washes up the teacups, carefully stacking them back into the cupboard. She aches all over and her head’s spinning, and she climbs up the stairs to bed, rolling under the covers fully dressed. She takes off her expensive watch and puts it on the bedside table next to Nev’s reading glasses, before closing her eyes and curling up tight. She does not wake.


End file.
